Originally Posted by RampantCoyote
Part of it is my hope to communicate better to the player what's going on. I hate it in RPGs when I've got something that I *think* should progress a quest with an NPC ("Hey, look, I have your ex-husband's head in this bag, here….") and nothing happens because the designer assumed you'd be returning with both the head AND the left ankle-bone, and you somehow overlooked the ankle-bone.

I understand that, but, you know, baby steps. This is (hopefully) the first game in a successful series. Don't try to accomplish everything in the first game. Present the world, the engine, background story, etc. Leave those time consuming details out. When the game comes out, if it succeeds as I hope it will, then maybe for the second one you can even hire a part-time or college student or your brother to do all the typing for all those possibilities in all those quests, while you can concentrate your talents in what matters, engine, story, designs, plots, etc.
Just an outsider suggestion that's all.